


Summer in the City

by Loremaiden



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, Gen, Hot Weather, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 14:46:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4395989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loremaiden/pseuds/Loremaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson sees his hopes dry up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer in the City

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to JWP 2015 #21 (Heat Rash) on Watson's Woes.
> 
> Heat Rash. It's a muggy, hot summer and someone's reacting badly. Metaphorical bonus points for including salve/lotion/ointment and needing help applying it.

It was the fifth straight day of a muggy and sweltering heat wave, and there was no sign that there would not be a sixth. I was finding it hard to bear, both for comfort and as an unwelcome reminder of my advancing age that the heat bothered me more than it used to. It was the kind of hot weather that sapped the strength and will out of me to do much of anything but laze about the flat and fan myself with a piece of folded foolscap.

I proposed to Holmes that we take a seaside holiday for relief, for I surmised that if upstanding citizens were laid low by the heat, so would the criminal classes. But such an escape was not possible, Holmes excitedly explained. To my dismay and my friend's delight, crime was not on the decline; it was actually on the rise.

"It is mostly small crimes, petty trifles that the Yard can handle on their own, but the sheer _number_ of them, Watson! I have never seen the like. I have started a monograph on the subject— _The Effects of High Temperatures on Criminal Activity in a Major Metropolis_ —and we cannot leave London to waste time splashing about in the ocean. And if this atmosphere continues, I theorize that a bigger crime could occur that would require our attention. In the meantime, we must observe and collect more data."

Holmes was so cheerfully absorbed with updating his new commonplace book, that he was completely unmindful of the oppressive heat and my irritated countenance as he shuttered my hopes.

"I am glad one of us is enjoying themselves," I muttered only half to myself as I made my way to the washroom to draw myself yet another cold bath.


End file.
